


Capsicum and Cream

by ambiguously



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Extra Treat, F/M, Food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25521592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/pseuds/ambiguously
Summary: Five years ago, Ben Solo found a starving girl on a forgotten battlefield world no one gave a damn about.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49
Collections: Eat Drink and Make Merry 2020





	Capsicum and Cream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucymonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/gifts).



"Try this."

Rey gave him a look. Ben was familiar enough with this look to pull his arms back. She'd only bitten him once, and that had been five years ago, and she'd apologized later and anyway, the scar made an interesting shape on his hand. Instinct pulled him back now, and he saw the memory of that old, bad time in her eyes.

"Fine. But tell me what it is first."

Ben couldn't read the language the stall's sign was written in, but he didn't have to. "It's a dessert. Sour and sweet layered together inside a thin shell."

Rey opened her lips. Ben popped the morsel into her mouth, watching her face as she chewed. The pleasure in her eyes grew as she bit through the pastry wrapper, the sweetened sourpaste filling her mouth. He couldn't stop the smile crossing his own face, and didn't try.

He'd found her five years ago, half-starved and a little wild, scavenging for junk in the bellies of derelict Star Destroyers on a forgotten old battlefield world no one gave a damn about. His own life had been in disarray, floating without aim or hope after he'd screamed unforgivable things at his uncle and stormed away from his training. He'd left his friends behind, and that prickled at him as much as having left his family, but pride prickled harder, driving him into isolation until a strange thrilling thread had pulled him to Jakku, to this girl.

"I can train you," he'd told her, and she'd greeted him with a flat look of suspicion and a firm refusal of wanting anything he had to offer.

They'd argued. They'd spent the last five years arguing after that first argument, but he'd won the first one by changing his offer. "Come with me, and I can feed you."

That had led to another, different argument. But here she was, and here he was by her side, making their way planet by planet across the galaxy together. Rey had agreed to learn the use of her powers, and Ben delighted in showing her how to manipulate the Force almost as much as he delighted in the expressions she made as she tasted something new. He'd never missed a meal in his life, and he'd grown to think of food as nothing more than an obligation to his body. She'd missed too many, and her face filled with wonder at every opportunity to eat something she'd never tried before.

The next stall boasted meat on skewers, spitting juices as they rotated over an open flame. "We'll take two," Ben said in a broken approximation of the local tongue, exchanging a credit slip for two wooden sticks.

He didn't have to encourage her this time. Rey had eaten too few sweets in her life, and distrusted them on sight, but she'd been forced to hunt her own meat back on Jakku, fortifying her diet with the stringy lizards that dug down below the sand into cooler dens well under the baking hot surface of the planet. These bites of meat steamed in the cool evening air, huge and juicy in comparison to the poor meals she'd scrounged for herself before. Rey bit into one, tugging it off the skewer with her teeth, her mouth huge with the overlarge bite, and a thin dribble of fat escaping the corner of her mouth.

Ben took a more discreet bite from his own skewer. A moment later, hot spices flowed through his sinuses, burning away the flavor of the meat and the top layer of taste buds on his tongue.

Rey snorted at him. "Too hot?"

"It's fine," he said, or tried to say, the words coming out as a cough.

His mother had taken him with her to the formal Alderaanian ceremonies she was asked to attend from time to time. He recalled most of the food on display had been dainty, bland fare, except for one traditional dish that had scorched his young mouth this same way when he'd taken an unsuspecting forkful. His mother had left the ceremony early that day, removing Ben and his outraged tantrums from the presence of the more solemn survivors of her lost home world.

She cocked her head. "What are you thinking about?" She popped the second bite of meat into her mouth.

His own quick anger reared up. Rey had grown in her telepathic gifts over the last year, plucking thoughts right out of his head. They'd talked about boundaries, and privacy, and he'd explained that just because she'd overheard him thinking about her while in his own cabin having a private moment, that didn't mean anything. But anger didn't serve him well with her, arguments or not, and besides, after she'd insisted he was wrong, and it did mean something, her telepathic gifts had been turned to far more pleasant use between them.

He sighed, which turned into another cough. "I was remembering a formal dinner party with my mother." He handed Rey the second stick. "Here. You'll enjoy it more."

Rey snatched the skewer, still chewing her previous bite. The bit of fat at the edge of her lips would start to dribble down soon. The Alderaanian dignitaries at that long ago party would have been most offended. Ben leaned over and kissed the corner of her mouth, sparing them both the imagined humiliation.

She swallowed and grinned. Before he could steal a second kiss, she bit into another spicy bite, and somehow, that was even better.


End file.
